Offshore platforms, which are very often made in environments with extreme climatic conditions, have a surface for the landing and take-off of aircraft, generally helicopters.
Helicopters are used for almost all the transfers, both of freight and personnel.
The above-mentioned surfaces generally consist of a metallic plane, normally made of steel or aluminum, supported by the platform structure by means of suitable frameworks.
Surfaces of this type are also made on vessels such as, for example, container ships or tankers or even on smaller sized merchant ships.
These surfaces located on a floating or fixed offshore structure are also known as helidecks.
In order to make the precise localisation of the landing point easy for the pilot of the aircraft, and in accordance with international standards, specific identification symbols must be shown on the above-mentioned surface, such as, for example for the helidecks, a large capital letter H (from the word Helicopter) and a circle inside which the above-mentioned H is centred.
In the majority of cases, the landing surfaces are painted green whilst the symbol H is white and the circle is yellow.
So that the above-mentioned surfaces can also be used for night-time landings, the identification symbols present must be illuminated.
The making of a lighting system which is able to render the above-mentioned identification symbols visible has numerous problems and disadvantages.
A first problem is due to the fact that the surfaces on which the system must be installed are, as mentioned, made of metal material, either steel or aluminum, and it is therefore not possible to make tracks or channels in which to fit the luminous devices and the relative power supply lines.
This circumstance means that the lighting devices must be made very thin so that they can be rested on and protrude from the surfaces.
Modular systems have therefore been made consisting of plates with a longitudinal extension containing lighting elements positioned in line, the plates being then connected to each other by suitable electrical connections.
These connections are, however, the source of problems since, for example, for installations on oil platforms it is necessary to comply with explosion-resistant regulations which involve solutions, in general rather expensive and complex, to guarantee the absence of sparks. More specifically, the casings and the connections are both complex and costly to make.
Moreover, in order to guarantee compliance with the regulations, the above-mentioned connections are necessarily bulky, thus constituting an undesired volume projecting from the landing surface.
Document EP 648 898 teaches the making of lighting systems comprising a sequence of base elements encapsulating inside a plurality of electroluminescent sources, with the sources stably fixed to the respective base element. This connection renders the system not particularly versatile in its embodiment as well as decidedly not very practical with regard to its maintenance in the event of faults.